Opera’s 100 million users splits both desktop and mobile browsers

We’ve reported a lot about Opera Software’s success with their Opera Mini mobile browser. What hasn’t been in the news recently is the growth in Opera’s browser for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. The browser-maker states that it now has the same number of mobile users as desktop users according to current metrics.

Opera currently boasts a user base of 100 million users which includes 50 million desktop and 50 million mobile users. Helping Opera to hit a milestone of over 100 million users is the year-on-year growth of 30% in users seen by the company’s desktop browser between March 2009 and March 2010. The company says its record growth occurred following its launch of the 10.5.x generation.

If you look at some of the features offered between Opera for desktop and mobile you can begin to understand how the growth in users between the two browsers may be linked. Probably the primary feature leading to a connection is Opera Link, which synchronizes bookmarks across devices including mobile and desktop. Another feature which is popular for mobile users is Opera Turbo. Opera Turbo allows for quicker browsing thanks to 3rd party Opera servers which compress website data before it is transferred back to the browser. If a user is a big fan of the feature on their mobile phone I can see where they might want to utilize Opera Turbo on their computer as well, especially if they use a mobile data card and don’t have an unlimited data plan.